CDT student Harry Emerson took part in the Alan Turing Institute Reinforcement Learning - From Theory to Practice Summer School from 1-7 June 2021.

Harry says of the event: 

The summer school was a week-long introduction to the theory and implementation of reinforcement learning algorithms, organised by the Alan Turing institute. Each day commenced with a series of online lectures delivered by Dr Nathanaël Fijalkow explaining the mathematics underlying a selection of significant reinforcement learning algorithms. The topics covered were broad, allowing me to learn about a variety of machine learning and deep learning techniques, including Monte Carlo Tree Search, Deep Q Learning and Policy gradient methods. This knowledge was supplemented with daily workshops, where students were divided into structured seminar groups and asked to collaboratively work towards implementing the algorithms described in the morning lecture. This provided me with an opportunity to get feedback on my implementations from experts in the field, as well discuss my research and ideas with other students starting their own research in reinforcement learning.

I am really pleased I had the opportunity to attend the summer school, as it is highly relevant to my PhD project. In the coming years, I will focus on implementing reinforcement learning algorithms to automate the control of insulin delivery for type 1 diabetics. Applying this technique to medical data comes with a series of associated challenges around utilising small and often sparse datasets, minimising patient risk and evaluating algorithmic performance. Having a good foundational understanding of the inner workings and limitations of reinforcement learning algorithms will make me better equipped to overcome these obstacles in my project. The course also gave me the opportunity to discuss my research with individuals working in a diverse range of fields, such as environmental data science and astrophysics. Listening to the successes and difficulties they have had in overcoming the challenges in their research, also provided me with inspiration as to the direction I could go in my own project.